The Cloud offers us so many advantages, the infographic from Microsoft embedded below looks at the benefits directly passed on to your workforce as well as a return on investment for your business.

Times gone by, these benefits were only available to larger organisations that could afford to invest in such technology. Now with the emergence of Office365 and Microsoft’s Azure services, partners such as e-Aviso, can provide these offering directly to our Small to Medium sized Business Customers.

If you would like to know more, please contact us to discuss how we can help migrate you to the Cloud.

Welcome to e-Aviso. This is my first post and to say I am excited is an understatement. I am in the middle aged years of my IT career and whether it’s my age or just the rapid rate of change we are seeing at the moment, I feel like a born again IT Evangelist.

To date I have been what can only be described as an IT traditionalist. Having worked the last twenty years in various Business Sectors I have seen few changes in regards the way IT has been managed by larger corporations. IT has been preferred to limit an end users choice of hardware and desktop customisations in return for reliability, security and reduced support costs.

That is until Now!! We are seeing more and more flexibility in the way a user accesses and run Applications. People have become to expect access to the applications they need at anytime from anywhere. With Bring Your Own Device initiatives and working from home now more common place.

The number of platforms is increasing but users expect the same functionality from each. They also want the same end user experience with their preferences following them around as they work from home, the office or on the move.

This creates challenges for the IT Management Teams. Thankfully the tools; platforms and standards are merging together to deliver these high demands.

I am relishing the chance to get to grips with these new technologies and further enhance my technical skills with the ultimate goal of delivering what my customers want.

Join me on that journey and I will share with you my experiences and what I have learned along the way…

On January 21st 2015 Microsoft held an Event in Redmond which they Webcast. They wanted to give an update on the progress being made on Windows 10. I had received word of the event through the Windows Insider Program I was expecting a quick update but what ensued was more enlightening and more exciting than I had hoped for.

Microsoft was kean to get across that the next release of Windows, Windows 10 – We are building it together…

There are 1.7 million Windows Insiders who have fedback over 800,000 items at time of writing. All the feedback is looked at and the pertinent suggestions are tagged and tracked and fed into the developers and all major stake holders. It feels very much like a community spirit with the program having full visibility. First impressions are that Microsoft really are well on the way to delivering an Operating System of the people.

The first requirement is obviouly how we all get our mits on this new OS once it is released. The technical requirement therefore is to be able to seamlessly transission from your current Operating System to the new shiny one. Microsoft have invested heavily in the engineering to esnure users are able to upgrade from Windows 7 and Windows 8.

Don’t forget however, this operating system is not just for Desktop and Laptop home and business users. The operating system is being desinged from the ground up to run on the smallest of devices to the largest.

The image below shows all the devices Window 10 will support.

Windows 10

Smart Phone

Small Tablet (<8″)

Large Tablet

2in1

Laptop

Desktop

Xbox 1

HoloLens*

Surface Hub*

* Will come onto these new devices later.

Supporting multiple hardware platforms gives Microsoft an obivious advantage but also brings us users some excellent benefits. Imagine being able to pick up a device and have the same user interface and smarts at your disposal.

The image below shows a view of Windows 10 running on a Smart Phone next to a Laptop/Desktop PC.

Windows 10 Start Screen

Microsoft were quick to point out these benefits but also wanted to under pin them with some over arching principles:

Mobility of Experience

Trust

Natural Interaction (Voice; Pen; Gesture)

The term “Windows as a Service” was I feel at the heart of Microsoft’s vision, and me being rather cynical beleive that this is absolutly the driving force behind a lot of the core developments in Windows 10. Microsoft have been shifting from the traditional licensing models in preference of more Pay-As-You-Go or pay for what you consume models.

Microsoft has been moving more and more service offerings into the Cloud and allowing users and Businesses alike access to these through subscriptions. A key player for Windows 10 will be it’s OneDrive Cloud Storage Service which will store a user’s “profile” in the Cloud to allow all the Windows 10 supported devices to store and retrieve your user settings as you roam from device to device.

As a society we are seeing more and more now, applications that are free at point of purchase but contain IAPs (in App purchases) that allow you to build on and enhance features. Not surprising then that Windows 10 will be free to upgrade to in the first year. If you currently have windows 8.1 or Windows 7. I suspect this will be the platform upon which “Windows as a Service” will be founded.

I myself loved XP, finally made the jump to Win 7, not so happy with Windows 8. Primarily I suspect as I am born of the MS DOS era and moving to Mouse and Pointer was a major change in the way I interacted with my trusty PC. Moving to touch in Windows 8 was a bridge too far. Fine for my smart phone where touch is practical but my work device where I have to get down to nuts and bolts, I feel touch just doesn’t work for me.

You’ll be pleased to hear then that in Windows 10 both modes are catered for and my first honest impression is they have got it right! Given that Windows 10 is cross device it simply wouldn’t of worked if they hadn’t got this slick and seamless.

Task bar is back with Start Button which can be expanded to full screen if you wish so you can use your App Tiles if you are that way inclined. There is a neat Action Centre where Notifications from Applications can be viewed and even interacted with if the developer has embraced Microsoft’s latests UI Development standards and APIs.

If you have a 2in1 device there is a seamless transition if you remove the keyboard, from Laptop mode with taskbar and start button combo to full screen tiled mode. Seamless if you include acknowledging the notification and agreeing to the switch. You can still use the standard UI in Tablet mode and the onscreen keyboard looked impressive.

For you guys like me that haven’t ever used a Windows Phone and are not aquainted with Cortana let me introduce you… She is Microsoft’s Voice Activated Personal Digital Assistant. Very similar to Google’s Voice Search or Apples Jiri. Powered by the Bing Search engine, when demonstrated the tool appeared slick and responsive. I am sure the demonstration was well rehearsed so the real test will be when we get access to Cortana in the next Technical Preview Release of Windows 10 in the next few weeks for Laptop/PC.

The image below shows Cortana running on a Windows 10 Mobile Phone along side a Windows 10 desktop to laptop device.

What impressed me greatly, not just about Cortana but all the Applications featured during the Webcast, was the way the apps adapt to the platform upon which they are running. You can see from the above screen shot Cortana running on a Phone and a Desktop. The interface is near identical therefore giving the user a common experience across devices. This is at the core of what Microsoft are trying to acheive with Windows 10. They are taking it one step further with the use of OneDrive, their storage in the cloud. Preferences and data can be stored on OneDrive and therefore follow you from device to device, therefore Cortana’s knowledge about you, also is accessible from which ever device you are using.

On the desktop you can also access Cortana from the task bar by typing in your search criteria. What’s neat is results returned are tailored to you and takes in what Cortana knows about you. For example if you asked Cortana on your phone to track a particualr flight, if you switch to your desktop and typed “flight” into the Cortana area of the task bar, the first returned result would include the specific flight number you asked Cortana to track. In summary, Cortana resides in the Cloud.

Trust was mentioned alot in the Microsoft presentation. This is obviously a major concern for some people, Microsoft have tried to be as transparent as possible with a look to impoving that trust so they have added a feature into Cortana to allow you to see everything she has learned about you…you can even remove peices of the Data she has learnt in error or you simply want her to forget. If only we had that ability with Carbon based lifeforms.

With Windows 10 Microsoft has taken a number applications it deems as core to the supported client devices and developed a number of Universal Applications. I suspect these applications will either operate better or won’t operate at all unless you have subscribed to an underlying Cloud service such as OneDrive. Some of these services will be free I imagine but as yet things remain unclear as the exact pricing and what you get included for free.

Office Applications

Word; Excel and Powerpoint will all be part of this Universal family. What was neat, Office on the Mobile Phone will be included with Windows 10. This adds a big plus to Mobile Business users. They will be able to work on the go and with a powerful interface they are very familiar with. This will be a big pulling power to get users off the other mobile platforms such as Apple and Android.

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